British Bank Abruptly Drops Russian Network RT’s Accounts

RT Is Expecting More Challenges

Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, Russia’s main English-language satellite network, criticized Britain for not respecting freedom of speech after a British bank closed the outlet's accounts.

MOSCOW — Russia’s main English-language satellite network complained on Monday that its British bank was abruptly closing its accounts. The network, which reported on the decision, called it a British-government-sanctioned attempt to interfere with freedom of speech.

It was the latest controversy for the network, RT, originally and still commonly known as Russia Today. The broadcaster presents itself as an alternative to the Western media, but critics call it a Kremlin-financed mouthpiece that seeks to create an alternative to reality.

The network released a letter from the bank, NatWest, telling the broadcaster to take its business elsewhere. In the letter, the bank said that it would stop serving RT on Dec. 12, that the decision had come after “careful consideration” and that it was not subject to appeal. (The broadcaster initially reported that its accounts had been frozen, but it later clarified that the bank was closing the accounts, not freezing them, and that RT was still able to withdraw its money.)

NatWest’s corporate parent, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, said in a statement on Monday that “these decisions are not taken lightly.” “We are reviewing the situation and are contacting the customer to discuss this further,” the company said. “The bank accounts remain open and are still operative.”

Britain’s Treasury said the government was not involved in the bank’s decision. “This is a matter for NatWest, not for the government,” a spokeswoman said, speaking on condition of anonymity under government protocol. “We as the U.K. government haven’t changed the sanctions and obligations related to Russia since February 2015. For that reason, this is a decision that only NatWest has made, possibly based on their own risk appetite.”

RT presents itself as an independent and credible alternative to mainstream Western media, but its broadcasts repeatedly show the West as a sea of chaos. Ofcom, the British broadcast regulator, has singled out RT repeatedly for its lack of impartiality.

RT’s defense has been that its viewers expect alternative viewpoints.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, linked the bank’s decision to the June 23 referendum in Britain, when voters opted to leave the European Union, an outcome that has plunged the country into economic and legal uncertainty. “It appears that in leaving the E.U., London has left all of its obligations on free speech behind in Europe,” she wrote on Facebook.

In a statement on its website, RT called the bank’s decision “incomprehensible and without warning.” The network said the decision was part of a pattern in Britain and Europe in recent years to “ostracize, shout down or downright impede the work of RT.”

Dmitry K. Kiselyov, the head of RT’s parent organization, was placed on the European sanctions list in 2014 over his encouragement of the annexation of Crimea. Barclays, the company’s previous bank in Britain, closed its accounts in July 2015.

In Moscow, the management of RT said on Monday that its lawyers were dealing with the banking situation and that the network would remain in operation.

“We have no idea what this is connected with, because nothing new happened to us, and we received no threats — neither yesterday, nor a day before yesterday, or a month ago,” the RBK news website quoted Ms. Simonyan, the editor in chief, as saying.

Jonathan Eyal, assistant director of Russian and European security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said that the bank’s action might have reflected concerns over RT’s links to the Kremlin. “Certain questions are being raised over the corporation and its sources of funding,” he said, “and the bank must have been aware that this is not a happy commercial transaction.”

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Mr. Eyal noted that some financial institutions had recently faced large fines for handling questionable accounts, and he speculated that NatWest may “prefer the controversy of closing the bank account over dealing with a business that may have tainted money.”

Beyond that, he said, the bank may be following a lead, either directly or indirectly, from the United States, which has been weighing its response to Russian hacking of American computers and servers. The bank’s action could be a kind of “veiled sanction,” he said, aimed at “trying to convey to the propaganda sources that they are increasingly finding their life difficult in the West.”

RT started in 2005 as Russia Today, a television network meant to sell Russia abroad through soft features. Very few watched. In 2009, it switched tracks, becoming a snarky anti-West outlet. It changed its name to RT and erased any obvious Russian link.

RT portrays itself as an independent alternative voice. It trumpets the slogan “Question More,” yet generally sticks to the same major news that CNN or the BBC is covering.

The difference is less in subject matter than in tenor: On RT, the West is portrayed as grim, divided, brutal, decadent, overrun with violent immigrants and unstable. The network tends to make favorable remarks about Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president; the former CNN host Larry King, who now appears on RT, scored a rare direct interview with Mr. Trump in September.

In RT’s coverage, Russia seems to brim with multicultural tolerance; President Vladimir V. Putin is depicted as a modernizing leader protecting Russia’s sovereignty with no dreams of empire; and the enormous civilian toll in Syria represents the unfortunate many who are caught in the crossfire as the Syrian government battles terrorists.

Most analysts interviewed by RT toe the line, and any who do not are rebuked. When one analyst recently said on the air that the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea remained an issue, the questioner quickly cut her off. “Crimea is off the table,” he exclaimed, echoing a Putin statement.

In Britain, a study by the Institute for Statecraft found that despite its claims of neutrality in the European Union referendum debate, RT gave an edge to the “leave” camp.

Public accusations about a general Russian bias toward what is known as Brexit grew so loud that the Russian Embassy in London issued a statement saying that Moscow had no position on Britain’s place in the European Union.

It is unclear how many viewers RT actually reaches. Figures released by the Broadcasters Audience Research Board in Britain for the week of the Brexit vote, for example, showed that the network had 926,000 viewers in the country, or 1.57 percent of the overall audience.

RT boasts that it is the “most-watched news network on YouTube” with over three billion views. Millions of those hits, however, were for raw disaster footage like the 2011 Japanese tsunami that had nothing to do with RT.

A version of this article appears in print on October 18, 2016, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: British Bank Abruptly Drops Russian Network’s Accounts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe